Tag Archives: The Wall

Last week was kind of a good news week. Ellen had successful melanoma surgery, their old man carried a sign, and Reid was just days away from a father and son trek to Minnesota.

May 1, 2017

Ellen/Reid: This note will no doubt hit your mailboxes while I’m in your midst, but so be it. This serves a useful function since I will likely forget most things I need to tell you so might as well put thoughts down on paper while the remembering is good. Yeesh. It’s hell to get old.

Reid, it’s good we’ll take the drive. Actually, you will drive and I will ride shotgun. The car will be relatively light except for the Legos and bird feeders that will be in the trunk for the girl’s birthdays. A couple of books for each might be a good idea, too, so there will be a side trip to Barnes & Noble sometime today. It this sort of trip that is fun to look forward to, just hitting the road with a cup of coffee and some tunes. Which reminds me, there are a few more favs from Pandora to download today.

Ellen, your surgery sounded routine. What a relief that it was caught in stage 0. That your surgeon suggested ice cream – and ‘buy yourself new shoes’ – was a great, assuring response from him. The scar will be wavy and ugly for awhile but that fades away and smoothes out over time. You’ll be back to normal in no time flat. Ah, the sins we pay for from our over-sunned youth. At least you have time to educate the girls and keep them covered up. And all the sun you can keep off yourself now will pay healthy-skin dividends down the road. I’m covered head to toe each time outside right now and don’t mind looking like a nerd. Any more than I already do, that is.

The climate march in Washington was interesting. I hadn’t done anything like that since my college days and the Vietnam war. The chants are pretty much the same, only different words. Lots of marchers were gray hairs; maybe we feel we need to demand climate action for the Emmas and Georgias of the world since all of this has happened on our watch. But I think the march fell on deaf (and dumb) ears. Honestly, the more that is seen/heard from Trump, the less I trust him (not that I ever did). He is just a loose cannon, and despite his grandiose self-proclamations that his presidency has done more in 100 days than any before him, none of it is true.

There’s something good about being part of a larger, citizen-mobilized effort. There are significant doubts, however, about whether Pres. Trump and his cadre of non-climate change believers were paying attention.

What is astounding is he has almost completely abandoned his campaign oaths to his base; he’s put it to them on The Wall, 52 percent of his tax cut goes to the 1 percent, he’s shafting Trumpers (and us) on health care, and he front loaded his cabinet with billionaires and Wall Streeters. He is about smoke and mirrors and deflection and distraction. Drain the swamp? Are you kidding? How can that be when D.C. was already in the hands of Republicans? How’s that help the average person? As for the protest itself, there has to be a better way. Sure, there is strength in numbers, but we might be better off taking the message to the outlying areas where Trump supporters live. The dialogue needs to be civil but forthright; is dirty water and filthy air in your best interest? How well do you want your kids to be educated? How’s your health care working out? Oh, and those manufacturing jobs? When do you expect those to come back? The only thing that will really matter is the mid-terms in 2018. But ‘spin’ and fear mongering are art forms in politics now. Who knows what it will take to put government on the side of the average Joe and Jane.

My rehab is on pace. Been walking 3-6 miles a day with no discomfort or set backs (knock on wood). At the check up last week they gave me the green light to start light work on the elliptical today but in view of the road time this week those workouts won’t begin until I return. What bugs me most is the air-bloated, skin-stretching nature of the surgery. I don’t know when that will truly go away. We’ll see. Just gotta keep the weight off, I guess.

Well, enough blather and pontificating. See you both – and the girls and Tim and Liz – real soon.

What’s this blog about?

Every week for 15 years (typically on a Monday), I've written a letter to my two children Ellen and Reid (shown flanking Ellen's husband, Tim), tucked the single pages into two envelopes, affixed necessary postage, and plunked the letters into the nearest U.S. Postal Service mailbox.
I'm a big believer in the written word. If you gave letters a fair - and frequent - shot, you'd know what I mean.

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Dave, the dad who writes letters

I'm the one behind two totally unrelated blogs; one on 15 years of writing a weekly letter to my kids (plus other recipients), the other on my localized environmental responsibility. I'm a writer by trade and both endeavors are accepted practice for me. As for the letters, my adult children Ellen and Reid may have seen letters as corny at one point, but it's accepted practice for them, too, to find something in their mailbox other than bills and junk mail.
Email and texting don't do a lot for me for a lot of different reasons. Snail mail has its place in the communicative world so as long as they keep selling stamps, I'm buying.
As for 'Pick Up Your Path' and the environment, I advocate what citizens can do themselves to take a direct hand in their neighborhood environment. But Pick Up Your Path is also a general environmental blog. It may be largely about litter and trash, but both of those are just one element of the total environmental picture.